The national language of Pakistan is Urdu, which sits alongside English as the South Asian country’s official language. From this, you might assume that most Pakistanis speak Urdu as their native language—but in fact, only a mere 7% of the Pakistani population learns Urdu as their first language. The largest native language in Pakistan by a long margin is Punjabi, which constitutes the mother tongue of about 38% of the population, with Pashto, Sindhi, and Saraiki also claiming more native speakers than Urdu. Everyone else speaks one of the other dozens of indigenous languages in Pakistan, such as Burushaski.
Burushaski, with its 112,000 or so native speakers, is a particularly unique language within the linguistically diverse nation of Pakistan. Most languages in Pakistan come from the Indo–European language family, with the notable exception of Brahui, a Dravidian language—but Burushaski is a language isolate, meaning it has no discernible relationship to any other known languages. This makes Burushaski all the more important to protect, because as a minority Pakistani language, it’s threatened by bigger languages in the region, including Urdu, Hindi, Kashmiri, and Khowar. At TranslationServices.com, we’re pleased to present our new translation team dedicated to Burushaski, addressing the lack of Burushaski translation services on the market.
Why not reach out today to request a free quote for our Burushaski translation services?
An exploration of Pakistan’s unique language isolate, Burushaski
Burushaski—also known under a plethora of other names, including Biltum, Khajuna, Kunjut, Brushaski, Burucaki, Burucaski, Burushaki, Burushki, Brugaski, Brushas, Werchikwar and Miśa:ski—is native to the northernmost reaches of Pakistan, specifically the region of Gilgit-Baltistan. Burushaski speakers inhabit Hunza District, Nagar District, Gilgit District, the Yasin Valley, and the Ishkoman Valley, with a few hundred speakers also living in India’s Jammu and Kashmir territory. The language is written in a modified version of the Arabic script, like most other languages in Pakistan.
Burushaski is classified as a subject-object-verb language, the most common word order in the world. As a double-marking language, Burushaski marks multiple words for the same grammatical feature, making it an inflectionally complex language. Nouns are divided into four genders—masculine, feminine, countable, and uncountable—as well as several cases. A possessive prefix is used to indicate possession, with some nouns requiring a possessive prefix to be grammatical. Burushaski is also an ergative language, which means the object in a transitive sentence is treated the same way as the subject would be in most European languages.
Providing Burushaski translation services for all your translation projects
Are you looking to translate your document to or from this unique Pakistani language isolate? We’ve built a robust Burushaski translation team with the aim to accommodate as many client needs as possible, so we’re confident that we can help. Our native-speaking translators, who come from all areas of Gilgit-Baltistan, cover the three primary dialects of Burushaski—Hunza, Nagar, and Yasin—as well as smaller varieties, and they’re trained in translation both to and from Burushaski, so whatever services you need, you’re bound to find them here with us.
The diversity on our Burushaski translation team isn’t just in the dialects our translators use—it’s also in the types of translation they’re experienced in. Some of our Burushaski translators are experts in the business world, with experience translating the sort of business and marketing documents you might need when moving operations to northern Pakistan. Other translators on our Burushaski team are well versed in academic and educational translation, able to provide reliable translations of research surveys or educational materials for Burushaski-speaking children, regardless of the field. Finally, we also have translators who specialize in literary translation, so whether you want to translate Burushaski stories to English or media like novels, poems, websites, games, or apps to Burushaski, we guarantee a faithful, high-quality translation every time.
Our Burushaski translators are proud to help you translate to and from their unique language. Why not get started today by shooting us a message?